To Have And Have Not

Inside Freddy’s bar, three tourists—two men and a woman—are having drinks. They resemble and act like tourists, which angers Harry when he enters, and he tells the woman to “shut up, you whore” (130). Freddy is the only one who stands up for the woman; the two men with her remain silent.

Bee-lips has brought the front money for Freddy’s boat, but he takes a cut of it as his “commission” (131). Harry offers his car and radio as the remainder of the collateral, and Freddy, though he is still hesitant to let Harry borrow his boat, agrees to the deal. As Freddy moves back inside the bar to take care of the tourists, Harry lays out the plans for Bee-lips to deliver to the Cubans: He wants them to “take him by force” (132) to create the illusion of his innocence. Bee-lips confirms that the bank robbery is scheduled to take place as expected, and both men re-enter the bar from the back room.

Back in the bar, the woman’s husband is angry at the insult towards his wife. He confronts Harry, who ignores him and walks out. The woman is initially offended but thinks that Harry is “beautiful” with a “Genghis Khan” face (136). Her husband, a writer named Laughton, laments how “strange” (135) this town is after speaking with Professor MacWalsey, an economics professor on a long sabbatical in Key West. Richard and Helen Gordon, two more tourists wearing traditional country club attire, enter and begin drinking expensive liquor with the Laughtons—a fact that thrills Freddy to no end. Both couples poke fun at the local millionaire couple, the Bradleys, for Helene Bradley’s well-known engagement with multiple sexual partners. As the group goes their separate ways, the happy façade falls apart, and Richard and Helen Gordon both intimate that they would rather be elsewhere with different people instead of one another.